


should i stay or should i go

by deadlybride



Series: zmediaoutlet [31]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drunk Sex, Episode: s08e06 Southern Comfort, M/M, Season/Series 08, first time in a long time, touchstarved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29518101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: Sam's tired of missing Dean when Dean's right there beside him.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: zmediaoutlet [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/587392
Comments: 11
Kudos: 141





	should i stay or should i go

**Author's Note:**

> vaguely inspired by an anonymous prompt for 'touchstarved Sam'
> 
> Title from the Clash.

For a hundred and fifty miles of midmorning blacktop outside of Kearney, Missouri, Dean won’t look at Sam. Sam figures he’s got a convenient excuse—traffic, threatening rain—but he doesn’t really need the excuse, does he. Everything they could say they’ve said and now Sam’s just got to sit here, his elbow on the door and his hand braced over his mouth so he won’t say more. Furious for a few miles and just—dragged-out empty, for a few miles after. It cycles. He wants coffee very badly but after the fight they had he doesn’t want to ask for a thing.

He sat there and let Garth wipe up his face. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t have done himself but he didn’t want to go into the bathroom, not with Dean trying to get the black ectoplasmic goo out of his ear, off his skin. Garth gave him a worried smile before he left with Dean and Sam didn’t return it, and Dean didn’t look at him before the motel room door closed, either. It was left to Sam to try to clean up the room. Not the first time. Glass shards swept up as best he could, broken furniture piled on top as a warning to the maid. Dean tips pretty well, whenever this happens, and so Sam tucked a fifty under an unbroken coffee mug and then sat there with his bags packed and his hands over the back of his neck and thinking, god, where did it go this wrong? Why did they let it?

The blinker tick is the only warning before Dean pulls off at an exit. Sam refocuses. Des Moines, coming up through the windshield, and here an exit with the usual suspects: gas, fast food, motel. He didn’t actually drive all that much, in the last year, and it’s a surprise still how often the car needs gas. Another itching burr, reminding him: the responsibilities he should’ve had. What he ignored, and what the costs of ignoring it were.

A Shell station. Sam opens his door first, before the car’s even in park. “How much on the pump?” he says, and Dean’s hand pauses on the gearshift but he actually answers.

“Fifty.” He half-reaches for the inside of his jacket. “You’ve got—?” he starts, and Sam interrupts and says, “I got it,” kind of sharp, and then wishes he hadn’t said it sharp. Last few miles he’s been more scraped-out than mad. Go figure.

Dean glances at him, at least. Still greyish outside, the clouds thicker the more they drive north, and his face looks white. “Get caffeine, too,” he says, and it’s not sharp. It’s not—anything.

Two coffees, granola bars. A Snickers, since Dean likes Snickers. Olive branch or bribe, Sam doesn’t know, and then for thinking it he rolls his eyes. He gets a Payday, instead, and waits for the old guy in front of him to cash out and then gets the fifty, on the pump, and then stands at the lone hightop by the window with old coffee rings and spilled Equal and watches while Dean crouches to get the gas in the car and then leans against the rear bumper, head sinking between his shoulders. Sam can’t tell from here if his eyes are open or closed. He looks tired. Sam sips his coffee, sugary with the fake hazelnut creamer. Well, they’re both tired.

That argument. He barely slept, last night, and when he did he had a dream of the day Dean came back. Different to how it really happened. In the dream he was the one waiting, in the cabin with the light coming through the dirty windows, and he was so happy, heart-sore, his pulse thudding thick in his throat—and that’s true, at least, that’s how it was when he was coming through the door on that day, thinking it couldn’t possibly be true—but in the dream, when Dean came through the door, he came with black streaming from his ears and nose and the corners of his mouth and instead of eyes he had dark holes and he knocked Sam down to the ground and got his hands around Sam’s throat and he leaned down and said—well, when Sam woke up with his heart thudding sick in his mouth, he couldn’t remember what the Dean in the dream had said. He woke up because the bathroom door had closed and there was a light seeping through the cracks but he couldn’t hear what Dean was doing in there. It wasn’t a subtle dream. He lay there awake, nauseated and sorry, because he was too exhausted to be angry, and he doesn’t remember when he fell asleep again but the next thing it was morning, and the alarm on his phone was sounding, and Dean was sitting up on the far side of his bed with his shoulders hunched up high and his back all tension, and he’d said _shut it off, jesus_ , his voice so raw it sounded like he’d been yelling all night. Sam shut it off and went and took a shower, and that was it, pretty much. That was what they had had to say to each other, today.

Dean accepts the coffee with a nod, and the Payday with a strange twitch of his eyebrows. Sam eats a granola bar in a few efficient bites, tosses the wrapper before they leave, and sips slow at the rest of his own coffee as they drive out of the gas station and back up onto the highway and on through Iowa, wondering if Dean thought he’d actually forgotten or if Dean thought it was carelessness or if Dean—

He shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t be wondering. He should be angry, and he is angry. His hands curl in cringing reflex whenever he remembers shaking Benny’s lukewarm monstrous hand and seeing the slight smugness of his look and seeing Dean’s expression, just behind, warning, saying no. Saying that Sam didn’t get a say, here. Like after all these weeks of lying, of turning away from any real conversation Sam tried to have, of him being jagged-sharp and furious and—and not-Sam’s—this was just another something Sam wasn’t allowed to touch.

There’s a lot of Iowa and a lot of quiet. They stop again for a piss and burgers and Dean says, “Get mine with extra cheese,” and Sam, jesus. Sam does. Extra cheese and onions, too, and they eat at the bar with college football on the television and Sam watches Stanford absolutely cream Arizona and he expects Dean to say something cutting, something snide, but he doesn’t get that, either. Dean just shakes his head as the reporter runs up to Arizona’s quarterback who can’t be more than twenty years old and asks breathlessly what they did wrong, and Dean says, “Should be a law against that,” and signals the bartender for the check, and Sam watches the poor kid struggle to maintain his composure for the cameras and thinks, yeah. Yeah, there oughta be a law.

Dean doesn’t turn west for Sioux Falls like Sam expects. Instead there’s more road and more north and more clouded sky, and more quiet, and it’s a dimming twilight when they pull into St. Cloud, Minnesota, after a full day of nothing, and Dean says, finally, “Think it’s gonna rain,” and roughly one minute later it is. A steady sifting-down kind of rain, the kind that’ll keep going for a week if it goes for an hour.

A motel. Dean goes in to get the room. End of the low building and actual real keys and two queens, like it’s been since Dean got back. Sam drops his bag on his bed and folds the key into his hand until it hurts. “I’m not hungry, you?” Dean says, and rolls on without actually waiting for Sam to say anything. “Figure we can look around for a job here in the morning. Still waiting for word on whatever else.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, looking at the bedspread. Mottled green-and-pink, ugly. Whatever else, said all neutral. Like there’s not a river of blame running through it. “Yeah,” he says, again, and then looks up and says, “Give me the keys.”

Dean’s got his gun in his hand, his bag unzipped and his shit already spilling out across the other bed. Dirty shirts, a tie. What he wore yesterday when he tried to kill Sam. He frowns. “What?”

Sam ignores the gun. “I want dinner,” he says. “Give me the keys.”

A tightness around Dean’s eyes but what is he going to say? No? Sam wants to dare him to. Dean looks down at his bag and then digs in his pocket. It's a clean underhand arc, meant to be easy for Sam to catch, and Sam turns and goes without another word, and when he's behind the wheel he looks at the muted pinkish light of the window coming from behind the thick curtains and he—closes his eyes, and turns on the car, and finds a bar.

It wasn't two beds. Not at first. Not that very, very first day, in the cabin, with the light coming in and Dean strangely tan, all blinding grin and quick manic movement and his hands strong—gripping Sam's shoulders, sliding up under his shirt, bright and hot and dizzying. He'd tackled Sam to the floorboards and cut him and splashed Borax over his skin and then when Sam was still gasping and unprepared he leaned down, right down, and gripped into Sam's hair and said breathless _fuck, I missed you so much_ , and kissed Sam bruising, and Sam could hardly keep up. They barely made it to the bunk in the corner, the one that creaked so bad under their weight Sam thought it would collapse, but it held together somehow. It was so fast it sits in Sam's memory in strange little snatches—Dean's lips smearing across his throat, and the way his head hit the wall and Dean laughed delighted and rolled over on top, and for some reason the very moment of sliding his hand down into Dean's barely-opened jeans and feeling the crisp roughness of his pubes before anything else. That particular feeling.

It was only afterwards that it fell apart. Sam should've lied. He's thought about it a lot, these past weeks. Months. Or maybe he should've told Dean everything: every single second of panic, terror, misery. Every failed summoning and every fruitless hour of research in Bobby's remaining books. Every moment where he thought _if he's dead, then I—_ how every second of living felt like failure, like betrayal, how no matter he what he did he was letting his brother down, so what was the point of counting it—but they didn't lay that on each other. They knew what those days felt like. At least he thought they both did. Maybe it was different, for Dean. Sam wouldn't have thought so, but. Maybe it was.

The bar's mid-sized, kind of friendly feeling. A girl in her twenties pulling beer who's mastered the line between welcoming and actually-flirtatious, and Sam's set up with a beer at the far end by the bathrooms in record time, and he looks into it and thinks, fuck, why not, and drains it fast, and says, "Another, thanks," and the girl's very shaped eyebrows knot a little but she sets him up, so. Big tip for her, later. She smiles, eyes dipping to his chest, and there's a little sway as she walks back down to the couple at the other end. Maybe over the line to flirtatious, then.

 _A girl_. Sam looks down at his beer. He's not sure he ever heard Dean's voice with that much venom in it. Not even—back then, with Ruby. Like this was a worse betrayal than that. He chews the inside of his cheek and shakes his head, tries to focus on—hockey, on the television, but Sam doesn't know anything about hockey, and he can't get it out of his head.

A girl. Like that was the worst part. Like Sam's year of emptiness could be summed up with the fact that he fucked someone else, for a little while. Even if it didn't work out. Even if they ended up more as friends, at either end of a falling-down motel with a shared visitation for a dog, and Sam spent most nights in bed alone watching the blue-and-red neon sign blink through the blinds, and he couldn't— No. And where did Dean get off, anyway? Being that furious, that betrayed, when he was the one who—with _Benny_ — He finishes that beer and orders a bourbon, instead, and settles in. Fuck it. He's watching hockey.

The bartender cuts him off, at some point, but she's very nice about it. Sam knows he's too big to threaten and he tries to be nice back but he's not sure it's working, from her face. "Why don't you drink some water," she says, sweet but with her eyebrows high, and he takes the glass in both hands just to make her feel better. "Can I call you a cab?"

"Can't leave the car," he says and it comes out—oh. So. It's been a few hours and he… that burger was a while ago, wasn't it. Still, this part is important. He has to make sure she gets it. "I can't. Car's special."

"Okay," she says, drawing it out. The hockey's over and there's a too-colorful gameshow on the television. Sam puts his head down on the bar, which is better. Old-people music playing on the sound system. Sam grinds his forehead back and forth on the wet wood. Old-people music is what Amelia called it. Sam just thought it was what his life sounded like. "Okay," she says again, muffled, "I'm just gonna—" and then the glass gets removed from his hand, and she says, "All right, you can't sleep here, we close in thirty. Who should I call?"

Good question. Sam folds his hands over the back of his neck and tries to think of a good answer. Some time passes while he tries to figure it out.

He hasn't been drunk in—he doesn't know. A year. When Dean was gone and Sam didn't save him. Now Dean's here and Sam wants to be anywhere else because Dean doesn't—Dean won't—

"All right," he hears again, but it's a different voice this time. Hard hand on his arm, tugging, and he sighs against the bartop and says Dean, or thinks he does. He lets himself be pulled upright but doesn't open his eyes—that's gonna be bad, he knows that for sure—and so he lets his weight sway, sink, and the hands are still hard but they're holding him up, so that's something, anyway. His head drops back—hard bone, muffle of leather—Dean. "Jesus," he hears, in some tone he can't interpret, and he turns his head in and there's a scrape of stubble against his nose, and he sighs and feels boneless, for once, his body just melted away where it won't cause any more trouble.

"Dean," he says, definitely out loud because Dean says, "Yeah, that's me," kind of annoyed but quiet, and then louder, "Is he cashed out?"

Some answer. Sam's drunker than he thought. He can't remember if he tipped well, hopes he did. His head doesn't hurt yet, like his face doesn't hurt even though Dean was trying to kill him, yesterday, and that's funny kinda, that there aren't repercussions, for anything. Here they are no matter what. He smiles and says Dean's name again and gets steadied, pushed upright a little more. He grasps for Dean's jacket so he can't get away and says, "I love this song," because he knows it at least and likes it fine, and because when Dean talks about music he's happy. Sam wants him happy.

"Yeah, Sam, everyone likes Sinatra," Dean says, and Sam finally opens his eyes to find himself swiveled around on the barstool and Dean in front of him, with unhappy tired lines at his eyes and mouth and looking just—Sam reaches for his face and Dean kind of jerks, like he didn't expect it, but grasps Sam's hand and pulls, says, "C'mon, Jolly Green," not annoyed anymore. Sam slides off to stand with his weight half in his boots and half steadied against Dean's shoulder, and Dean's arm goes around his back and this, this is the most Dean's touched him, since that day, that last day.

Difficult walk in the spattering rain. Propped against the car, and Dean going through his pockets, warm familiar touches. The passenger seat, poured in, and he slumps into the corner between the door and the seat-back and Dean's mouth is in the amber light from the parking lot lights, scattered and blurry from the water, and Sam licks his mouth clean of that same water and wants. He isn't allowed to ask. Driving, then, the car's rumble and sway, and Sam spends the whole drive watching strange flashes of Dean's face appear in turning headlights and fluorescent storefronts and gleaming wet red in brakes and thinking that he dreamed this, more or less this, so many nights, that year in Texas. Dean's cheekbones and lips and freckles and ears and the bump where his nose got broken, way back when they were teenagers, here in the car, where Sam could almost touch him. He wishes he could touch him.

He jerks when they get to wherever they're going. "Last stop, everyone off," Dean mutters. His door opens and shuts while Sam's still blinking, his mouth dry. The rain's still falling and Sam listens to it drumming the roof, the glass. Imagines laying out in it. Feeling it on his skin.

He almost falls when his door opens. "Christ, how drunk are you?" His shoulders were caught but they're out in the rain—cold, on his face, and he closes his eyes and tips and feels it. "Sam. C'mon. Sammy, you're too big, I ain't carrying you. You gotta get your feet under you, man." But there's no good reason for that, Sam thinks. He's just going to fall, and then Dean'll see that he can't do even that, and then what's to stop Dean from just leaving him here? A squeeze at his shoulder and Dean's voice is softer. "Jeez, you're getting soaked. C'mere." His hair's pushed back from his forehead. He reaches for Dean's hand but misses, and his wrist gets caught, and he's pulled back—Dean's body, warm behind his—and his weight tips so far that he has to scramble, lurching, and Dean says: "Hey, there he is. Okay, Gumby, now we gotta do one foot in front of the other—" and hey, it turns out that Sam didn't fall down, and he sways swimming and heavy-skulled from the rain to the chilly concrete walkway to the cool slick polyester comforter, under his back, the room warm and that same pinkish light seeping in behind his eyelids, his wrist still caught in Dean's grip, his jacket heavy-wet and water trickling into his ear. He tips his head, trying to get the rain out.

"You're a mess," Dean says. He lets go and Sam's hand drops to the bed, heavy too. "What were you thinking?" Oh, you know, Sam thinks, but doesn't say. He stretches his legs out, his bootheels dragging on the carpet, and there's a sigh, and then Dean's warmth up against his knee, his voice quiet. "Yeah, I know. Just can't do anything right, huh?"

"Yeah," Sam says, and slits his eyes open. Wet, eyelashes and mouth and his hair soaking the blanket. Dean's splintery up above him, confusing, and Sam turns his head toward the window, the heavy pink curtains blocking out the night. Raining harder. "Yeah," Sam says, again, to someone, his voice sore.

A touch to his jaw, soft. He hasn't shaved for a few days. Dean's fingers drag along the bone, prickling through the stubble, and he scrunches his eyes closed, feeling it. A touch on his chin, on the dip under his mouth. Pausing there, warm. Sam's lips part and Dean's finger brushes the bottom one and Sam drags in air. It feels—he can't quantify it. The touch dips down to his neck, to his collar, where his damp shirt's clinging, to press against the bone there in a way that almost hurts but it feels so good, too, that Sam doesn't want it ever to stop.

"Sammy, I'm—" Dean says, or starts to say, because Sam says louder: "You never touch me."

He reaches up and manages to get Dean's hand. He presses it down, harder. The feel of him, a little damp but the heat of his skin, and the closeness. Sam turns his head and looks up through the shattered light, blinking, trying to get Dean's face. "Right? It's been—no one ever does."

Dean's frowning, when Sam can focus. "Hey, we both got hugs from Garth," he says. Sort of light. "Can't believe you're forgetting that. I still gotta shower off the patchouli."

Like Garth counts. Sam grips Dean's wrist and reaches for his jacket, pulls, and Dean resists for a second but then sits by Sam's hip and even that, the warmth there, that feels good. Right. Sam sighs. "There," he says. Dean's thumb drags along his collarbone. "Missed this part."

Dean's face is so pretty in this kind of light. This golden motel light, with the yellow bulbs that aren't environmentally friendly but are cheap, with the night seeping in behind him so he stands out against the dark. His freckles showing and parts of him shadowed. "What part?" Dean says, after a second. Sam almost forgot what he said and blinks, feels heavy. "Sam?"

"Oh," Sam says, and tries to remember. He smiles at Dean, shrugging against the bed. "Just—when you used to—last time I slept beside someone was… I don't even know. A long time. It was so good when you came back. Forgot how good it was."

It is. Dean's frowning at him but he's still just the best thing Sam's ever seen. Dean's hand slides up his throat, fits his jaw. Slides up, cupping his cheek, and Sam tips into it, all the air going out of him. "Jesus, Sam," Dean says, quiet.

Dean doesn't want this, Sam knows. Not since that very first day. Dean had someone else, has someone else, someone better, someone who doesn't fuck up, and Sam—god, he fucked up. So bad. He's selfish, though, he thinks—he gets to be selfish, today at least if on no other day, because Dean tried to kill him and even if Sam maybe deserved it or something like it then surely at least today Sam gets one thing he wants, and Sam says, blurry, "Could you just sleep here, just so I can—so you'll be here, and I'll know," and Dean says miserable-sounding, "Come on, Sasquatch," and leans down, and his lips land soft on Sam's cheek and then Dean turns his head and his lips find Sam's and Sam breathes through it, not sure, letting Dean kiss him, trying to remember what Dean kissing him could mean.

"Sam," Dean murmurs, and Sam grips his shoulders and lifts into it, spinning. Hand on his jaw, another slipping to his waist, digging in at his side. Dean kisses him and Sam's jaw drops and Dean licks inside and Sam thinks, yes—Sam thinks, finally—aching—and Dean shifts, leaning over, his thigh alongside Sam's thigh and his other leg spilling over Sam's lap and Sam touches him, doesn't dare let go.

God, he's drunk. He's dizzy, laying here on the bed with his eyes closed, Dean's weight over his chest. "What are you doing?" he manages, when Dean pulls back from his mouth, and Dean huffs hot against his chin and says, "Shit if I know—you want me to stop?" and Sam says _no_ and grips his jaw and pulls him back in, not doing much to help but open, grasping, wanting anything Dean'll give, anything he has. The world's spinning lazily with its axis right in Sam's hindbrain, it feels like, but Dean's hand is skimming up his stomach under his t-shirt and Sam's fine if the planet just tumbles away, a skipped marble flashing out of sight.

The touch of Dean's skin is—Sam's been high, Sam's been cracked-open. This feels more than that did. Dean pulls at him, urging, and Sam moves on the bed somehow but the wheeling world's centered right on where Dean's hand is braced there, on his ribs just below one pec, and Sam grips his shirt, pulls him down, keeps him. Fingers at his belt, in his jeans, slipping against his skin, soft and the nails dragging and the shocking warmth of them—"Hey," Dean says, picking his head up, "are you not—" and Sam shakes his head, says, "Don't worry, I—I just want—"—and lifts and gets Dean's uncertain mouth against his jaw, gets his hand around where Dean's thick, filling up his palm, heat and pressure through the denim. "Shit," Dean says, lifting up a little, but Sam won't let him, desperate for the feel of him, the weight. The knowing that he's here. The salt-taste of his throat, and the smell here under his ear where he hasn't showered all day and he smells like—the car, the guns. Beer. Sam's whole life, right here.

Dean has to help, with the belt, the zip. He sighs against Sam's hair when he's free and Sam touches—there, crisp-dry hair and the stiff resistance at the root and the smooth thick pole of it, curving up sweet, enough to get his hand around, familiar in every way. Dean's thigh between his legs, his breath in Sam's ear. "Not fair," Dean says, strain in it. Sam licks his lips, squeezes, and Dean huffs. "I'm getting all the fun, here."

"No, you're not," Sam says, and pulls, and Dean surges against his hand, hot. God, he's hot. Sam couldn't ever match it against anyone else. He's uncoordinated but he wants it, he wants to feel it—"Help," he says, selfish, and Dean half-laughs but there's a rearrangement—Dean half-tipped to one side, his fingers brushing Sam's, knocking them out of the way a little, taking over. Sam touches his nuts instead, careful because he remembers, clearly, some other drunk laughing day when he sucked Dean's dick and then sucked in his balls and Dean yelped, shook, too sensitive—and he doesn't think that's changed but Dean just groans for it, now, and Sam tips into him and mouths at Dean's throat, at the peek of shoulder where his t-shirt's pulled away, feels the smooth jerking pump of his arm, trapped between them. The strong present meat of him, the hardness of his bones. Sam bites and Dean jerks under him, says _fuck_ , says louder, "Sammy, for god's sake," and Sam says back, "Let me feel it," because that's what he wants, that's all he wants. He wants Dean pulsing-present, loud, furious, jealous, hurting—as long as he's _here_ —and Dean says low, "That's it, huh? You want to feel it?" and Sam nods and grips at Dean's t-shirt and pulls him in, and Dean's dick presses up firm against Sam's stomach and Dean pulls Sam's shirt up out of the way and grinds in close and—ah, ah, there. That thick twitch, the heat. Sam turns his face and Dean's there, breathing hard, and Sam kisses him and it takes a second but Dean kisses back, softer. His teeth drag against Sam's lip. Sam drags his cheek along Dean's cheek and can't let go. He's not going to let go.

"I've got to," Dean says, at some other point. Sam blinks, muzzy. Dean's pulling and Sam grabs at his hip, keeping him. "Dude. Enough with the octopus routine."

Quiet. Sam tucks his head down and Dean smells like sweat, now, and there's the smell of come. He drags at the edge of his shirt and his stomach's a mess, and Dean sighs. Touches there, too, and Sam squints down into the shadows between them, and Dean's hand looks somehow like a stranger's but he's careful, dabbing at Sam's skin. His dick's tucked away and Sam misses it. Wishes he weren't so drunk that sucking it was a viable option. Wishes he were less drunk, generally, and that's, he thinks, a sign that he's sobering up. Too soon.

"Sure I can't get you off?" Dean says, after a few seconds. Almost polite. Sam closes his eyes, tips away. "Feels kinda messed up."

"It is pretty messed up, Dean," Sam says, tired now, and Dean sits up—away from him—and Sam thinks, well, that's it.

Dean doesn't disappear. There's a space—the rain louder outside, audible now that Sam's not focused on every breath from his brother—the damp mugginess of his wet jacket, and the way his stomach's starting to complain—and then Dean's fingers, at the waist of Sam's jeans, tracing along the low bared part of his belly, soft. Sam drags in air, feels his stomach suck in, and Dean pauses, but then there's his thumb, pushing against the trail of hair, careful.

"You're gonna be so pissed," Dean says, quiet. "In the morning. Shit, in like, three hours."

Sam tips his head. The clock says two. "I'm pissed now," he says, and it's so not true that he doesn't know why Dean doesn't just laugh at him, call him a liar, say, _oh sure, princess_.

There's a faint shadow of Dean on the far wall, from the lamp by the door. A big blown-up silhouette over the other bed, his head bent and his details impossible to see. Sam wants another drink and won't have one. Probably not for a little while. Unfair, for both of them, when it doesn't fix anything.

"It wasn't supposed to be this screwed up," Dean says. His fingers drag across to Sam's hip and then away. Sam misses them instantly. "I don't know. It just went wrong somehow."

"Yeah, somehow," Sam says. Dean sighs, and then the bed shifts, and before Sam knows it Dean's standing up, turning away, and Sam lifts on one elbow and says, "Wait."

"Gotta clean up," Dean says. He waited, though, is waiting, standing by the bed with his belt still undone and his ears pink and his eyes hard to read.

Sam's head swims, still a little too drunk for this. "It doesn't fix anything," Sam says, trying to follow the thread. Dean's eyes tighten. "Stay."

"Getting real mixed signals here, Sammy," Dean says, but he steps closer, and Sam reaches out and gets Dean's belt-loop and pulls, and Dean looks down, frowning. His mouth's a low curve. "Darlin', you've got to let me know."

A song? Sam shakes his head. He pulls, and Dean sits, by Sam's hip again, and Sam slides his hand up from the belt to Dean's side, to his back. His skin, warm.

Dean touches the hollow of his throat, soft. Thrilling. "What are you doing?" he says. Almost sorry.

"I don't know," Sam says, clinging to the last bit of whiskey, "but let me."

It's still dark, a quiet carved out bit of black rainy morning. There's tomorrow to remember to be mad. Dean lets him.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/643397612757778432/ive-always-felt-very-strongly-that-there-is-a)


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